Tuesday, July 7, 2015

florence, italy - ebb & flo.

it's only an hour & a half train ride from milan to florence, which means that taking a day trip there was a no brainer for our little family. the first stop? the accademia gallery to see michelangelo's david. i'm going to devote an entire post to that masterpiece (a "masterpost," if you will) so for now i'll focus on what else we saw at the accademia, as well as other happenings from our day in flo'.

(pretty sure no one calls it that).

so a stradivarius instrument is considered by many/most to be the best of the best in terms of sound, quality, &, well, sound quality. :) a stradivarius violin can be worth millions of dollars--& the accademia has an original one handmade in the 18th century by antonio stradivari. ben popped in to see it while i took a restless norah outside (she had been silent & happy in the galleria for over an hour & a half so i was like, "it doesn't pain me to do this") & afterwards i asked him, "so what was it like??" his response? "mostly just like a normal-looking violin." HA.

another room in the accademia, in which dozens & dozens of marble busts line the walls. even though technically they aren't staring at you (they're mostly just vacantly staring into space, like all proper busts should) i admit it was a little disconcerting to walk around in there:

the thing that actually really impressed me about that sculpture room was how many beautiful & emotive pieces there were of women:

the classic "i'm holding these juuuust out of your reach" sculpture:

after the accademia we navigated our way over to trattoria mario. it's this little hole-in-the-wall type restaurant (squishy enough that there wasn't enough space for us to even wheel norah's stroller in--they had to fold it up & put it in a little side room). it's also one of those places that has only a few things on the menu, but every one of those few things is the best version of that thing you've ever tasted. we shared some pasta & steak, meaning it was the best steak i've ever had. another amazing recommendation from joseph & megan!

like every other day we spent in italy, it was SO hot. so, so hot. anyway, you can kind of tell how hot it is in these next photos, but then again...NOT REALLY. photos will never do the heat justice ;)

il duomo di firenze. spectacular!

& the bronze doors. EX-quisite:

just excellent. a UNESCO world heritage site! (& i also discovered upon reading up more on UNESCO & co that italy has the most world heritage sites out of any country in THE WORLD.)

ben & a sleeping norah waiting while i took a few pictures. ben's stance, haha--can you tell how zapped of energy the sun made us?